There’s are some extremely strange bits and pieces flying around about Valve and Portal 2 today, all over the place, and perhaps best summed up by the cavalcade of nonsense being posted on Metacritic by confused disgruntled gamers (and presumably quite a few trolls). The main contentions:

1) Portal 2 is not four hours long. My first run through the single player took me about eight hours. Partly because I took my time to explore everything, finding easter eggs, and enjoying the dialogue. And partly because that’s just how long it is. I’ve replayed a bunch of it this morning, from about 8am to 12pm, and knowing what to do and ploughing through it as fast as possible, skipping past all the longer conversations wherever possible, I hadn’t reached the end of the second act in the four hours. So, including the co-op content, I was not even halfway through the game. People claiming to have completed it in four hours are either some sort of speed-gaming geniuses, or lying.

2) There is no “Day 1 DLC”. There is the daft store, with all the overpriced guff that aesthetically augments your co-op character for the enjoyment of the one other person you’re playing with. I’m very happy to be disparaging about such silly expense, but it absolutely isn’t missing content for the game being charged for on top of the box price. That is something that gets me really riled, and something that I think openly mocks the customer – discovering that even though they’ve paid for the game, if they want to full version with all the missions/levels/weapons, then they need to pay more. But that’s in no way the case here. You’re not missing out on anything, but for some pointless skins and hats for the co-op character that make no difference at all to the game.

3) I’ll eat ten hats if it’s a console port. The game looks stunning, running in mega resolutions, in a game that’s obviously primarily designed for PC. Yes, there are 360 and PS3 versions, but no, the PC version at no point feels anything like a bad port. In fact, I wonder at how some of the co-op levels are even possible with only a controller for reflex movements. There is, however, one epically stupid mistake, where for the split second it takes for the game to save the words, “Please don’t turn off your console” appear on screen. This appears to be the evidence people have for the port claims, and there’s absolutely nothing else about the PC version suggests it’s a port, and even if it were, it would be a bloody perfect one in which there were no reasons to complain whatsoever.

4) This one is tougher to figure out, really. To the best of our knowledge, as a result of the ARG, the game did come out a few hours earlier than certainly we’d been told to expect. Whether Valve oversold the possibilities of what might come about from people engaging in the Potato Sack CPU business is still up in the air. Clearly there are some who are upset that it didn’t bring the game out over the weekend as so many had hoped, especially if they paid for the Sack in the attempt. We’ll be contacting Valve to see if they want to comment on how it all went.

As for complaints about the content being the same as Portal, the writing being trite or obvious, or the endings having been ruined by Valve, these really are just troll comments with no basis in truth whatsoever. To find out why we think it’s one of the best games this year, and likely will be by the end of the year, read our review here.

>It is nice outside. I saw a deer. Perhaps later I will tell you about it.

After this, I was just waiting on her saying something about seeing a rabbit outside (the day before yesterday.) When today she had seen a couple of humans, I was convinced, and was expecting some strange time travel twist. But it never came off! Weird.

What about the fact that I can’t enjoy Portal 2 OR THE SUNSHINE because I work in an office WITH NO WINDOWS under a proxy that won allow steam???!!!!!!!! Doubly frustrating as I’m the only one around (I work in a school).

Too sunny and nice out today? Obviously someone just trolling. The temperature dropped from 31 of your British thermal notation units yesterday to 5 today in the course of the hailstorms and potential tornadoes we went through last night; it’s supposed to be gloomy today, raining tomorrow and storming for the next 5 days after that. Seems like the perfect time to call in sick and cozy up to your favorite homicidal rogue AI.

I’ve noticed a lot lately that you only ever seem to get scores of 10 or 0 on User reviews on Metacritic . I use to quite enjoy reading some of the user comments on metacritic, but it seems to be populated by the same people who write comments on youtube

You know, i think the new system on YouTube actually makes sense.
Either you like a video or you don’t. The Comment Section is where you can state why you did think what of the game.

The same can be applied to Games.
The one big thing (what’s normaly the numerical rating of certain sites [i confess that i hate those, no wait, not hate i just can’t make much from them]) should show, did you overall like or not like the Game.
The Article is the Place where you state why.

Best thing of course is only an article and then the readers brains making their decisions based on them.

In general, any user rating system which takes the mean of everyone’s rating, while also allowing users to see the rating before rating it themselves, is fundamentally flawed. A simple example: A game currently has a single 1/10 vote; you think the game deserves 5/10, so you rate it 9/10. The average is now 5/10. You win, so to speak. With a large number of voters, the best strategy is to come up with your own rating and compare it to the current average. If your desired rating is higher than the current average, give the maximum rating allowed. If it’s lower, give the minimum rating allowed. Anything else is just minimizing your own voting power.

It seems Youtube has noticed this, and gone over to the like/dislike system which is basically the same thing. Another solution is not to let users see ratings before rating it themselves, but in most cases this entirely defeats the point in the rating system (since ratings are primarily used for people who haven’t played the game/watched the movie/whatever yet). I think the most elegant solution is to use the median instead of the mean, but if users don’t realise this and use the minimum/maximum voting strategy (and I’d say there are other factors leading to min/max voting, like fanboys and anti-fanboys), then everything gets assigned either the minimum or maximum rating, depending on whether the majority liked it or disliked it.

The “don’t turn your console off”-thing *is* a deadly sin. It shows that the game was developed first for consoles and then for PCs (if it were the other way, consoles would have the text “don’t turn your computer off”). However, the port seems to be good, so it’s just an estheticall problem.

Not really. The message is unnecessary with PCs (everybody knows that they can’t just pull the plug – Windows gives them a good telling off if they do. All it really shows is that they added the ability to show the message to the “core” (pre-port) game and forgot to remove it for the PC version.

I draw your attention to this post by a Valve employee: It’s easy for strings like this to get mixed up during development. On the console versions we can fail cert for not having a string warning the user not to shut off the console. We can also fail cert if the string says “Please don’t turn your PC off…”. So as such the strings get changed to be appropriate on the console (usually during the phase where we are heavily testing consoles and working to pass cert late in development). In this case it looks like a bug that the string was also changed on the PC version.

That really has no bearing on which platform is the “lead” platform, all of the platforms are important to us and it’s certainly not true that the game was built for consoles and then ported to PC. Like most of our past titles PC in fact tends to be the most used platform internally during much of development, though consoles get plenty of love too since we want to ensure quality across the board. “ Reference: link to forums.steampowered.com

It’s easy for strings like this to get mixed up during development. On the console versions we can fail cert for not having a string warning the user not to shut off the console. We can also fail cert if the string says “Please don’t turn your PC off…”. So as such the strings get changed to be appropriate on the console (usually during the phase where we are heavily testing consoles and working to pass cert late in development). In this case it looks like a bug that the string was also changed on the PC version.

That really has no bearing on which platform is the “lead” platform, all of the platforms are important to us and it’s certainly not true that the game was built for consoles and then ported to PC. Like most of our past titles PC in fact tends to be the most used platform internally during much of development, though consoles get plenty of love too since we want to ensure quality across the board.

@Jim: The Art-assets: yes, they should be shared. But should the PC-version contain references to the square and triangle buttons of the PS3? The “don’t turn your console off”-thing should never have been a shared asset in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not mad and I get that errors happen (though I don’t get how that one could slip past the testers, considering how much testing Valve usually does). I’m just saying that it is evidence that the PC was not the primary development platform.

Jim and CMaster said what I was about to say. Seems like it’s a tiny oversight from when the ‘core’ version was branched off, and they forgot to change that 1 line (how much text/art is going to change between platforms?).

Or… Someone at Valve left it in intentionally. People always complain about seeing “Press the Start Button” on PC Games… Maybe someone at Valve is calling his friends and colleagues over and going “See! I told you! Someone’s saying it’s consolified because of the save game message.”

Again, that’s now how games are made even slightly. The saving prompt was probably added a day before it went gold and probably added the code into all versions of the game instead of changing the text for the PC version. Probably because they were tired.

@Jim: The Art-assets: yes, they should be shared. But should the PC-version contain references to the square and triangle buttons of the PS3? The “don’t turn your console off”-thing should never have been a shared asset in the first place.

What? I haven’t seen any references to PS3 controls after an hour of playing, so are you just making up an example?

And I’m absolutely certain that the “press [space|X|yellow] to jump” is a shared asset, just one they set properly before release.

yes, they should be shared. But should the PC-version contain references to the square and triangle buttons of the PS3? The “don’t turn your console off”-thing should never have been a shared asset in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not mad and I get that errors happen (though I don’t get how that one could slip past the testers, considering how much testing Valve usually does). I’m just saying that it is evidence that the PC was not the primary development platform.

It doesn’t seem very compelling evidence. You could just as easily use it as a basis that the PC version was developed first, and there was a merging mistake somewhere along the line of porting it to console.

Particularly with the start text. The reason it is part of a shared string file is almost certainly because it’s simpler to manage and correct one file than update a file for each platform.

It seems quite often that the notion of being developed for several platforms simultaneously is enough to annoy people.

From my limited amount of play this morning it’s much more of a real PC game than Crysis 2, which had too many compromises for consoles – including the infamous ‘Press Start to play’ before it was patched out.
About the only thing to me that does seem like it’s a console compromise is that every level so far is a separate load with a loading screen. I wish Valve had found some way to get rid of the loading screen between levels, as it’s immersion breaking, particually when you could hide loading during the elevator rides.

“About the only thing to me that does seem like it’s a console compromise is that every level so far is a separate load with a loading screen. I wish Valve had found some way to get rid of the loading screen between levels, as it’s immersion breaking, particually when you could hide loading during the elevator rides.”
That’s actually a Source engine thing rather than a console thing. Actually, I see what you mean. I would actually say it’s a console thing. However, the amount of loading is really bad in the game, far too often you’ve got a big, console style animated loading screen. in your face.

You indeed have no clue how these things are developed and it proves nothing, except that all version probably share a library for the interface. Its probably quite easy to call up the wrong screen when entering the loading/saving phase.

In short, its a normal bug that tells us nothing about what was the primary development platform.

I just want to state that technically, the PC is just a type of console, it is a system in which you control the actions of said console or of other objects connected to said console, so even if they didn’t mean to do that, the term “saving please do not turn off you console” is still correct, and it is possible to accidently shut off a PC, something happens to disconnect the power cord, and you can do it purposely too. if you hold the power button you can override the windows (or whatever OS you have) and shut off the PC, though you would have to be stupid to do so

I wonder. Is “Saving. Do not turn your system off.” acceptable to the console certification people (the people who demand these messages appear, and don’t say “don’t turn your PC off”)? ‘System’ is a platform-agnostic term – it can mean PC or Xbox or PS3.

I Thought it as a GLaDOS-esque joke… It Didn’t come across once as “Console port lolol” When I played through. I Even laughed slightly when I saw it the first time. I dont see what all the hate is… Does it even mater? Portal 2 Is Fantastic.

“the loading screen between levels, as it’s immersion breaking, particually when you could hide loading during the elevator rides.”

That’s actually a Source engine thing rather than a console thing. Actually, I see what you mean. I would actually say it’s a console thing. However, the amount of loading is really bad in the game, far too often you’ve got a big, console style animated loading screen. in your face.

Most previous single player Source engine games have had a small semitransparent “loading” overlay rather than the fade-to-black followed by a loading screen seen in Portal 2. Even the 360 port of HL2 has the same small loading overlay, but with the addition of a progress bar. The loading screens in Portal 2 are jarring; I don’t understand why they used them.

I finished the singleplayer game in what Steam reckons to be 3.9 hours, but I honestly didn’t feel like I was intentionally speed running. I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I’m certainly going to go back to it again, but the fact remains that it is more than possible to complete the game in 4 hours – I did it completely unintentionally.
The opposing comments, make me feel as if there’s a chunk of the game that my copy just skipped or something.

Indeed, it took me near five hours, and that was without really doing as much exploring as I could – quick look at the achievement list shows a few secrets I need to go and find on another playthrough.

And I agree, it certainly didn’t feel too short. As with the first game the amount of content is perfectly matched to the story they wanted to tell.

I can’t honestly think of another recent game that’s made me grin this much, whether it’s because I’ve worked out a solution to a puzzle, or because of another brilliant bit of writing. Can’t wait to get stuck into the co-op.

Okay guys, answer me this – and I’ll try to do it without spoilers, but people who haven’t played it should skip this comment.

You saw the slow intro, in the bedroom, slamming through the wall, and made your way to GLaDOS. You played through the her 22 chambers, then went deeper down. You played through all of the three sections in the CJ section, eventually returning to the surface. And then you played through all of the 20 or so W chambers? And you did that in four hours? I’m at a loss as to how this is even possible. I think walking through all the chambers, and listening to the conversations, would take longer than that, let along solving the puzzles for the first time.

Current P2 playtime stands a 5.6 hours. This includes leaving it running on the title screen for a little while (maybe 15 minutes, tops), and also watching some of the extras vids and playing the Super 8 teaser. So just under 5 hours is my estimate at a completion time. And I listened to all the dialogue – thought the writing was top notch throughout. As I say, though, I missed a few secrets which I’ll be heading back to find at some point.

I don’t know, Steam claims that I’ve played it for 4 hours, when I KNOW I’ve been playing since 9 pm. I know for a fact that I beat it at around 6 am. And then I played the commentary bits up to the 3rd chapter, and it’s 9 am now. So I don’t know if I trust Steam’s playtime counter.

Steam reckons wrong. It tells me I played for 5 hours, but in know for a fact I started at 8:30 and finish at about 16:30 with about 45min for lunch. That’s just over 7 hours. I did notice that steam had to reconnect 3 or 4 times however, that, and steam seems to round the hours down seem to account for the short “play” times.

Regardless of Steam timer being inaccurate for some folks, just shy of five hours is still my completion time.

First achievement for escaping the first room was at 8:40. I started playing at 8:30 ish by my watch. Last story achievement was at 3:21 and with the ending I was finished around 3:30. That’s seven hours. I’ve been out twice, had breakfast and lunch, and a couple of tea breaks, which works out at just over two hours I spent not playing the game in that time.

Valve said before release that “The entire combined game, both single player and co-op campaigns, will be about four times longer than Portal 1. Each campaign is individually twice as long as Portal 1. Give or take.” Which seems about right to me, as Portal 1 is a 2-3 hour game.

That said, I still don’t get why people are so concerned with the length. It’s an excellent bit of gaming no matter how long it takes you, and once again I think they got the length spot on – enough content and story to fill the time without any of it overstaying its welcome. What’s more, I’ve still got co-op stuff to do, and as with Portal I’ll be playing the single player through again without a doubt.

I also want to get stuck into some map making when the SDK is out (if it isn’t already. I should check that).

@HermitUK
Your profile says 5.6 hours, but this is incorrect if you look at your achievement time stamps!link to steamcommunity.com
Lunacy – Unlocked: Apr 19, 2011 7:21am
Wake Up Call – Unlocked: Apr 19, 2011 12:39am
So from the beginning of the into to the start of the credits it took 7:21 – 00:39 = 6 hours and 42 minutes. Not to mention co-op. Also, a game’s value is not equal to its length.

EDIT: We posted at the same time and you’ve totally ruined everything I’ve said. Carry on! :)

@Jeep The co-op is incredibly good fun. Anyone complaining about the game length is writing off an entire half of the game, presumably because they lack the friends to play it with. Ah well, such is life.

If the steam play time counter thing is wrong, then I’ll happily withdraw my assertions that I completed it in 4 hours. I don’t know when I started playing, and I don’t know when I finished. All I know is that a fantastic game happened in between.

Steam claims I have played it for 5,9 hours and that would have included playing the first hour or so right after it unlocked and then starting from scratch last evening. I actually timed it after I restarted and it took me almost precisely 8 hours, so Steam is definitely off on time played.

I’m sure it’s possible to do it in 4 or even less, but only if you already know the puzzles or are good enough to instantly know what to do. I’m fairly certain most people will want to poke around the areas a bit, listen to all the dialogue and have to do some trial and error to get some of the trickier puzzles done, so calling it 7-8 hours for the single player seems pretty spot on.

I have 9 hours played on my steam stats and have completed both coop and single player, I wasn’t even trying to rush and I genuinely tried to listen to all the dialog. The game was incredibly fun and I’ll be playing more to try and get the achievements but I don’t see how anyone can take more than 6 hours for single player unless they were terrible at puzzles.

Well, you can apparently force a kind of weird kludgey split-screen mode via the console, but hear me out here.

You trolls and morons flip the fuck out over a vaguely console-looking save-notification, but I don’t seem to hear any complaints about a MAJOR MULTIPLAYER MODE completely missing from the PC version! What is wrong with you people!? That is something actually worth complaining about and getting on Valves back about! All the other complaints are insane and petty and groundless, but this is actually a large feature absent from supposedly the ‘main’ version of the game!

Except that it’s a key selling feature of almost every console multiplayer game out there. What is more convenient for a two-player game? Two friends sitting on a sofa, or each of them having to own a gaming-spec PC, be set up online, and have seperate copies of the game?

The code for split-screen is in the game. You can force it via the system console. Why couldn’t they have just put in an official menu. Hell, they could have just copy/pasted it from the 360 version.

PC gamers are so messed up nowadays that nobody cares when major features are missing, just so long as it doesn’t remind anyone that multiplatform games exist. That’s tragic.

I agree with dominic on this definetly. I actually didnt even think about the computer version having splitscreen but that would make things a whole lot better. That way I wouldnt have to buy 2 copies for me and my lady to play or break down and rent the ps3 version.

Less facetiously, it seems odd when PCs’ input and output devices are a superset of the 360’s, and they’ve already written the code to do split-screen, that they’d disable it on the PC. And it’s a pity, because it was brilliant in Settlers 2 (maybe the last game that implemented it…).

I’ll play plenty of online coop, but I have a 360 pad I use for certain PC games – SMB for instance. Split screen co-op would have been a nice addition, as I have a mate who I know would enjoy Portal 2, but he’s between gaming PCs right now due to lack of funds.

I was glad that i figured out before i pre-ordered the game that the ps3 version comes with a free PC steam version, so if i wanted to play with friends sitting next to me, or ones from across the world i can, the split- screen isn’t that bad either, and the linked steam-PSN accounts is pretty flawless as far as i can tell. And that i can play with anyone on steam or ps3 is an added bonus

The anger has made me loose faith in humanity a little, so much rage over a game companies marketing strategy. Actually you what it’s funny cause I get to not feel like that.
I am off to play British Bullsdogs on the grass with my mates…..yeah !!!

The i totally agree with the 0/10 comments.
1. The game is extremely easy.
2. DLC already ?
3. Game is short as hell(3 hours).
4. Story is meh, nowhere as good as Planescape: Torment.
5. Gets boring after 1st hour(due to the difficulty being for people with not much brain power)
6. Jokes aren’t funny.
etc
I am not trolling i am purely stating my opinion.
People have a right to have their own opinion, i know a lot disagree with me, but a lot also agree with me on metacritic for example.

Although i understand why the writers want to defend portal 2 cause of the ads on this site.”

Not Trolling, but accusing RPS of biasing their review/opinion, shilling for a game they know to be terrible, and lying to us all because of what ads they carry. That about right?

I seem to remember a pretty scathing Wot I Think of Fallout: New Vegas, while the site was festooned with Fallout: New Vegas ads. Also, the recent (somewhat) negative WIT of Dragon Age 2, with the site plastered in DA2 ads, let alone the articles critical of EA/Biowares behaviour with regards to their forums and access to the games/DLC. I think there were even some HomeFront ads on the site when it came in for a mauling.

In short, your insinuation is incorrect and fairly insulting. I believe you owe RPS an apology.

Oh, you’re right. It couldn’t be simply the fact that the authors on RPS are human too and thus have their own opinion about the game which quite possibly differs from yours. No, that can’t be it. Way too far-fetched. Obviously, they’re on Gabe’s payroll and they’re trying to protect their overlord from any and all criticism like good little lap dogs.

That’s right, RPS. We have you figured out!!!!111!!11one!one!!111

P.S. If you believe any news source is unbiased and neutral, welcome to the real world.

A writer already wrote what he thinks on the review.
This article was basically telling people that the opinions of certain people are wrong.
Since when are opinions wrong ?
In my opinion red is the best color is an RPS writer going to say my opinion is wrong ?
Sure he/she might have a different opinion, but saying its wrong is out there.
I still have respect for RPS and i read it daily, but this article shouldn’t have been posted.

There is a difference between stating an opinion and presenting facts. All of the points at the start of this article are being presented as facts. It’s not a case of “I think the colour red is the best colour”, it’s “the sky is a lovely shade of green”. Hence the honourable John Walker trying to clear things up. Although from the sounds of it he got the length of the game wrong.

HAHAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, this person isn’t serious. No one would make such a random comparison if they weren’t just trolling. “Yeah, I’ll just compare a brand new first person puzzle game to a 12 year old RPG that has one of the most acclaimed stories in all of gaming.” Not buying it, brah.

Shhh, if you disturb the troll at feeding time you’ll spook it and we will miss this fantastic opportunity.

Observe, if you will, the proud curve of its tusks, the hair on its lower back and the bright green colour of its rump that indicates that it’s ready to mate, but most of all, look at the masterful way it has phrased its comment to raise the question “Is this dude for real?” and yet also never quite answer it.

Truly a thing of beauty in its natural habitat. Let’s just hope it doesn’t run into a female in the near future.

“Using PS:T as a standard for story is like using Crysis as a standard for graphics.”

All of us should have high standards.
That way the industry would get better.

Problem is when we get happy when a company gives us a product.

4 hours long for 40 euros.
No challenge mode
No leaderboards
Things for us to buy in first day that could be included, this isn’t a free to play MMO.
Very easy
Meh graphics, crysis had better and it came out like 4 years ago…
Meh story, PS:T came out like 12 years ago and had a better story…
Uneven voice acting sometimes glados acts mad when she says something according and sometimes doesn’t, reminds of nico’s accent on gta4 which was very uneven, breaking the immersion immensely.
Jokes weren’t funny at all, the ” i should ask if your alive first” joke wasn’t funny at all for example.

Ok i get your point of view on the “opinions” and that you can’t call those wrong. For example i can see how you wouldn’t find the jokes that funny, i know a few people how would not find them funny. Me personally find them quite amusing. Though it has been stated several times that it is completely impossible to finish the game in under four hours, even if you are a Genius, that on the fact of reflex’s wait time load time, and walking time. so no you could not have finished it in 3 hours, don’t exagerate acts to fit a point, it only adds gas to an open flame. and it has also been stated of NO there is no DLC unless you count hats and what not, which i do not, but feel free if you do. And just saying, don’t dis on story lines just cause you don’t like them, to me it seemed like you were trying to start an argument. if you don’t like a story line keep it to yourself, people do love the story line and how it plays out, and in a writers perspective it is a good storyline, you don’t have to like it to say “oh that is a good story. EX) I hate the book “the Great Gatsby” but i will admit i can see how it was a great story and that it was a top novel, it is a good story, just not truely for me

and to add, this article is in no way saying the opinions are wrong, he was pointing out some things flying around the internet bound to confuse and enrage people, like the DLC, he never once stated that an opinion was wrong

People say its 4 hours long(I completed it in 4). He says.
“1) Portal 2 is not four hours long.”

People say day 1 DLC. He says.
“2) There is no “Day 1 DLC”. There is the daft store”
The draft store has DLC , so yes there is DLC based on the definition of DLC(this isn’t a opinion, just look up the definition of DLC).
He made an article denying opinions, that is so wrong from a journalist perspective…

As if it isn’t enough he even insults them
“posted on Metacritic by confused disgruntled gamers (and presumably quite a few trolls)”

What about all the 10/10 aren’t those guys confused as-well ?
Should call all the people giving 10/10 to the game blind fanboys? Since he call all the guys giving 0/10 trolls or confused disgrunteld gamers, while they might be loyal customers to valve that were extremely let down.

@Rareh
One, ok so there is “downloadable content” on the first day, (if you look at it that way), i see DLC’s as something that hinders you actually finishing the game.
Two, he naver once talked aganist ONLY the 0/10 people he talked about Metacritic in general and every website has trolls, he is not saying everyone there is a troll

three are you just talking about single player mode, and where are you basing this time off of, cause i am good at these kind of games and it took me 5.1 hours and I will admit it was with a little easter egg hunting, if you can give me proof i will believe you on the time thing, but i would also count the co-op as part of the game

The main thing i am trying to get here to actually is that it just seems to me that you were trying to start an argument (which i somehow got lost in) that is all i am trying to say is that

Yes the coop skins and gestures are content that you download. But it’s superficial meaningless content that doesn’t affect the gameplay at all. Glamour Content. Not Gameplay Content (which would be more missions, more NPCs, more in-game items that actually have an effect beyond letting you play Barbie with a computer game character)

“1) Portal 2 is not four hours long. My first run through the single player took me about eight hours. Partly because I took my time to explore everything, finding easter eggs, and enjoying the dialogue. And partly because that’s just how long it is. I’ve replayed a bunch of it this morning, from about 8am to 12pm, and knowing what to do and ploughing through it as fast as possible, skipping past all the longer conversations wherever possible, I hadn’t reached the end of the second act in the four hours. So, including the co-op content, I was not even halfway through the game. People claiming to have completed it in four hours are either some sort of speed-gaming geniuses, or lying.”

….so, it took you around 8 hours to play through the entire game, scratching and sniffing at everything- but then you couldn’t do even half the game in MORE than half the time it took you to beat the game- and this while “ploughing (sic) through it as fast as possible.” …*cough* Nothing to say here…luckily I don’t care since I don’t even play portal- but this paragraph just made me laugh.

“All these low reviews must have not bought the DLC. I bought the DLC as soon as I heard about it, it makes the game so much better. I’ve been telling all my friends to buy the full DLC pack, and I encourage you to do the same. Great game. Thanks, Valve.”

Don’t understand this attitude. If you’d rather apply a blanket generalisation than consider the difference between DLC missions/characters/quests etc and ‘things you can stick to your character’s back’, and as a result not play what might be one of the games of the year, then that’s your call. Self-defeating though.

Also, am I the only one who thinks these prices suggest Valve are just taking the piss out of the whole cosmetic DLC thing? I’ve never played TF2 so I don’t know how hats etc are normally priced, but to me it smacks of them sitting their laughing ‘surely no-one will pay £5 for a pink paint job?’.

Should be noted that I apparently unlocked a hat through an achievement. Yes, I probably can’t do this with all the random skins and junk, but hey, free hat.

Also, Day 1 DLC is stupid, but character customization options USED to be free. Hell, you had an array of player models to choose from in Q3, I noticed that by default, Portal 2 has NO customization options, not even emotes.

Yeah, but you can unlock stuff through playing / achievements, so there are customization options, you just have to earn them. Forcing people to earn them through gameplay unless they buy them IS stupid, but it’s not like someone who doesn’t shell out gets nothing, they just get stuff less quickly.

Do you know, I went to the shop to get a sandvich for breakfast the other day. They were asking £2.00 for a cheese ploughman baguette. But for £2.30 I could get a chicken caesar salad baguette! This is BS, they should include the chicken caesar salad filling in the cheese ploughman baguette. I hate day 1 additional content, so I will boycott Sainsburys and in future when I get hungry I will trap pigeons and eat them raw.

Yeah, you can say that with many games (Not CoD really) but you can probably assert with some confidence that it will actually happen quite quickly and quite drastically in this case. If you go based on Valve’s previous record on their own releases, at least.
I wouldn’t even say it’s a criticism to say “I’ll wait a few months until it inevitably gets a lot cheaper.” If you’re happy to wait, the game certainly won’t get worse (May even get better, with patches and added content) so really it’s just good sense. I’d say it’s rather a prudent course of action.

I’m really intrested in Valve’s comments on the whole potato collection thing…
I’m not a potato-hater or anything but I think that the massive ammount of work some people put into playing all those games (see that oxymoron?:) was just not worth the 6 or 7 hours ..

What massive amount of work? People put a massive amount of work into the ARG (which itself was free, and its own reward), but as for the Potato Sack games, people were either playing them and enjoying them, or loading them up and leaving them running in the background when they went off to do other things. Neither of which really qualifies as ‘work’.

The thing is, it could have been released much earlier than 10 hours before. The deal was Portal 2 would release as soon as the bars for all 13 games were filled. There was a system to how long it would take for a game to complete, and I don’t feel like the group that organized the wiki followed it that well.

Many people fail to see this fact, though, even though it was proven time and again that how fast this all went was completely based on the people and how well they were organized. They did pretty well if you ask me, but they could have done better.

Another contributing factor was that there were people who thought that merely owning the games in the potato sack was enough, that it didn’t require anything else, and some of these people probably make up the group that’s mauling valve over this issue.

When they announced it, I was ecstatic, thinking that I might get to play Portal 2 on Sunday night. I work multiple jobs, so I have very little time for gaming during the week, so I was psyched. I was sad that I would spend my weekend game time playing games that I wasn’t interested in … but if it meant that I got P2 on the weekend, then whatever.

So, you can imagine my anger when it became clear that we weren’t going to get the game until some time on Monday. I’d just wasted my weekend playing mediocre games for nothing.

Game took me 5.2 hours to complete the singleplayer first time. Played continously.
I didn’t rush it, thats just how long it took me to do it.
But I don’t care, I enjoyed every second of it, and thats what matters.
Halfway through the co-op with a friend, and thats taking more time, because he is a little dense :D

Subsequent playthroughs of the SP with be a definate, along with a run through with the commentary.

The DLC thing is just people wanting something to moan about, those same people who spend all their time moaning about TF2’s store items, but these ones are completely cosmetic.

I completely agree. I had no clue Portal 2 was such a bad game until I checked Kotaku and their “Portal 2 being panned on Metacritic” article. Ridiculous. I’d love to know what people are thinking when they give a game like this 0/10 or 1/10.

I feel sorry for the developers who put years of effort into a game which isn’t deserving of such *absolute* derision. I hope they don’t look at Metacritic and think it’s the universal opinion …

I can’t even understand how Portal 2 can get such negative responses while a game like CoD rehashes the same basic shooter gameplay we’ve had since Doom and *still* manages to get 10/10 everywhere as well as a billion dollar profit per iteration (mildly exaggerated).

According to some of the chat transcripts on the ARG wiki it sounds like Valve might be issuing some startement regarding to the ARG’s finale. Best to wait and see what Valve says about the ARG before jumping to conclusions about GlaDOS@Home.

What did people expect with the Potato ARG? Did they want the game more than 24 hours before it was scheduled to be release? For playing each indie game and collecting every single “potato”?
It was a very simple form of online marketing (made complex by very clever clues) that got people hyped and thinking about the game, and if nothing else, gave something for fans to keep busy with while they waited the last week before release. The end-goal from Valve’s point of view was to get as many eyes as possible on their game, and it worked.
The game is out now, so the complainers can either enjoy it or waste even more time bickering about irrelevant things.

If the intention was to only speed up release by half a day or so, then the arbitrary “computation” should have only started one day before release and gone much faster. The ARG is just as much subject to criticism as the game itself, complaining about Glados@home being disappointing is no less legitimate than complaining about an MMORPG having too much grinding.

The game only took me 4 hours and i listened to wheatley ect because the conversations are awesome :) However i didn’t get stuck on a single level and kind of breezed through the puzzles, so that’ll be why (but i am good at this kind of puzzle). I suspect most gamers will hit the 6-8 hour mark if they pay attention to the characters ect. like i did.

Enjoying it so far am a few test rooms into act 3. 1.6hrs. I don’t care if the single player content is short, what I’ve seen so far is very well designed, although a tad easy. I expect the meat of the game to be in co-op and the single player there purely for the world & story.

It took me around 7 hours to complete all 3, and from skimming the achievements I missed a hell of a lot of stuff. If you actually made it to the last act in 1.6 hours your doing something wrong. There’s more than 1.6 hours of dialogue in the first 2 acts never mind solving the puzzles.
*edited for typo’s*

It’s been a while since I’ve played a Source game, so I may be talking nonsense, but I was wondering about the graphics options. The shader detail maxes at “very high”, but other settings only go up to “high”. Is this just the way it should be? Because I can’t work out if my game looks very slightly worse than John’s screenshots in his review. Got a super-duper PC so I wouldn’t have thought I’d be locked out from the “very high” settings. Perhaps it’s just that I was playing with the Crysis CCC lvl 6 tweaks last night, and I’ve blown my expectations out of proportion.

HL2 etc. were nothing like as bad as this (can’t comment on the console ports however). There is quite literally a loading screen between every chamber no matter the size, whereas in HL2 they were at least ten or fifteen minutes apart.

In co-op you do get to do multiple chambers without a loading screen, and it’s bliss.

The HL2 loading screens seemed to be a fair bit longer than Portal 2’s though. It seems like they went for shorter but more frequent loading screens. The biggest mistake, of course, is actually having literal “loading screens” instead of the tiny, non-intrusive box they used for HL2 and Portal. I have no idea why they would do this; it makes the loading seem much worse.

Metacritic really need to renovate how they deal with user comments. Simply having a sea of either 10s or 0s is not helpful to the reader or conductive to how Metacritic clearly intended users to review the games.

What the heck is the point of Metacritic in any case? Who cares what public opinion says about any instance of media – since when has public opinion been worthwhile? When I want something recommended, I find a bearded expert like Mr Walker here.

@Dozer Fully agreed. Metacritic is a disease that carries far too much weight in the industry. The average person has shit taste in….pretty much everything, why would I listen to them for games as well?

(I wrote that previous comment while under the influence of Douglas Hurd’s (he was Thatcher’s Foreign Secretary for some time) biography of Lord Salisbury, who was a phenomenal foreign secretary at the height of the British Empire and Prime Minister through much of the late Victorian era. He came across as a very admirable guy. Salisbury respected the influence that public opinion had, while simultaneously taking the view that if your actions are popular, you’re probably doing something very wrong. Given I can’t play Portal without more moneys for hardware, I will read library books instead!

A number of hours don’t mean much anyway, as that’s something that’ll vary greatly between people. Steam says that I’ve played Portal (the first one) for six hours, and I haven’t even finished it. I haven’t bough P2 yet despite liking the first one – partly because I suspect that because vocal people complained that Portal was too short and easy that I won’t be able to see more than the first half of the game. Then it’ll become too difficult. I’ll stick with adventure games.

I don’t understand, why would there be a notice saying don’t turn off your console? I don’t own a console so maybe I’m missing something, but I’ve never had the urge to switch off my PC mid save…curious.

Here’s what John Mccasky said about this over on the steam forums, for anyone who’s curious:

“It’s easy for strings like this to get mixed up during development. On the console versions we can fail cert for not having a string warning the user not to shut off the console. We can also fail cert if the string says “Please don’t turn your PC off…”. So as such the strings get changed to be appropriate on the console (usually during the phase where we are heavily testing consoles and working to pass cert late in development). In this case it looks like a bug that the string was also changed on the PC version.

That really has no bearing on which platform is the “lead” platform, all of the platforms are important to us and it’s certainly not true that the game was built for consoles and then ported to PC. Like most of our past titles PC in fact tends to be the most used platform internally during much of development, though consoles get plenty of love too since we want to ensure quality across the board. “

Playing through slowly so that I could appreciate the humour and design, and only getting stuck a couple of times, I played from 9am to 4pm with only short breaks. Steam says that’s 101 minutes, which seems way off. So if you play straight through without stopping, the truth is probaly somewhere in between.

I do feel like Valve messed up a bit with the ARG. A lot of people got pretty excited by the ARG, to find out it reduced the release time by ~10 hours. Now Valve doesn’t owe anyone anything, and a lot of people had fun doing the ARG, but inevitably setting people up to expect the game to come out early and giving people 10 hours, I can see why people got angry. I was admittedly disappointed that I didn’t get to play it over the weekend, but oh well.

The notion that this was some evil scheme of Valve’s seems… unlikely to me, I imagine they thought it was a fun, cute idea which would make themselves and the potato sack money. No doubt they are correct, but I think they will need to do a bit of work to placate people who spent their entire weekend getting a game released 10 hours early. Yes, I know, they didn’t have to, and I know they could have just not done it, but they DID choose to do so, and why did they do so? Becuase they really, really wanted to play Portal 2. Disregarding people who burnt a massive amount of time, and potentially a fair amount of money, because they love your products, would seem a foolish commercial decision. I do believe that Valve needs to damage control on this one.

I keep finding it really odd when people pull the whole ‘valve said it would be released early’ crap.
It was released early, only seem to remember the stuff valve put out saying “help portal 2 be released early”, nowhere in that sentence did I see the words ‘at least several days early’ which most people seem to have seen.. valve said we could release it early and we did, how is this them lying?
They had to set the rate of the countdown before hand too, they didnt know how many would be playing potato sack games did they? Would you still have wanted them to release on the weekend even if only 4 people had been participating?
It seems some people spend all their time complaining that they think valve fixed the arg, and others seem to imply that valve should have belittled all the legitimate hard work people have done by forgoing the ARGs rules and just releasing the game 2 days early.
bah.

To be fair, the ARG did say 4/19/11 at 7:AM= 4/14/11 at 9AM along with the early release things. It was annoying and a little disappointing to those of us who busted our asses in the ARG, but my rage ends there. At annoyed.

That said, even though it wasn’t that big of a deal, it certainly could have been handled a lot better. I even sent a (very civilly worded) email to Valve stating as much, because they like to know these things so they can plan better in the future.

I do think its not unreasonable to suppose that “released early” would mean more than 10hours. I’m pretty sure that a lot of people who spent time, and, indeed, money, might not have if they had known thats pretty much all they’d get. I do not know if the ARG was intended to actually unlock more, or it was tightly controlled so that was the maximum they got. Valve doesn’t owe people anything, but this seems like a big PR mistake on their part, and to clearly comitted customer’s expense. I expect they’ll say something.

I speak here as someone who didn’t spend a single penny, but did spend some (enjoyable) time playing defence grid. I was disappointed that it wasn’t released in time for me to play it, especially as I don’t have access to my computer now until next monday, but I’m not overly worried.

Sigh. As I explicitly said, but apparently I have to reiterate, I have no sense of entitilement, and I didn’t pay anything this weekend. What I am arguing is not that Valve have committed a moral wrong, and should be punished for that, but they are a company who likes money. So considering those people who are now annoyed with Valve are the very same people who were extremely excited to play Portal 2, it behooves a smart company like Valve to smooth over those snags. In particular, I believe that the ARG was a strategic mistake, because it promised more than it delivered, which set people up for disappointment. It no doubt made Valve money short term, but might have lost them some originally loyal customers long term. I have no doubt Valve will care about this, because historically they have done so.

If people are swearing off Steam because they had THE OPTION of buying a bunch of awesome games with A CHANCE of Portal 2 being released early, then good riddance. I thought it was clever and the best thing about the Potato Sack, which seems went right over the head over all the complainers, is Valve using it’s powers to pimp the hell out of some really great indie games. I played some games I probably never would have looked at, had fun, Valve made some money, the little guys made some money, too. Great for everyone.

While internet morons freak out over them putting the wrong ‘Don’t turn off your system’ image in the PC build, nobody seems to have even noticed that a MAJOR MULTIPLAYER MODE (split-screen) is entirely missing from the supposedly superior PC version.

Yep, the consoles have more features here.

Oh, sure, you can force it in the console and INI-hack yourself a control profile so you can play splitscreen on the PC version, but it’s unsupported and kludgey at best. Why, Valve. Why did you cut this major feature that would have cost you almost zero time or effort to implement? Why is it missing from both Left 4 Dead games, too?

Why, Valve? Why? Do you really want PC gamers to pay twice as much in order to play with their immediate friends?

The saddest thing is that all the idiots screaming about how it’s obviously a console port (due to a single misplaced image file) drown out the sane few who want to point out that there’s actual content in the console versions that’s MISSING from the PC build.

The PC has gamepads and multiple USB ports. Hell, it can use any controller under the sun. And PC specs mean that gaming-spec models can handle split-screen gaming even better than their console counterpats. Why does nobody find it strange that it’s missing here?

Personally, I hate split-screen and avoid it whenever possible, yet I can see myself being angry if it was a feature I cared about, so I feel for you. At the same time, I feel like you’re in the minority – outside of HTPCs, I don’t see too many computers set up in a way conducive for two players right next to each other (in MY day-to-day, mind you. YMMV).

Still, if it’s easily available through console commands, Valve should offer a toggle in the settings. Maybe a patch down the line? Though the trend with L4DX isn’t promising.

The beta/demo version of Left 4 Dead actually had official split-screen support. They pulled the feature after people COMPLAINED that it was there. Apparently there’s a lot of PC gamers who are so bugfuck insane that the very idea of two people sharing one computer sends them into a frothing, console-hate-fuelled rage.

Personally I would LOVE officially supported split screen. Yes, I have two controllers (racing games) and YES I have a a media PC under my tv that i’m playing through Portal 2 with now – on mouse and keys but anyway.
I’d love to be able to get my friend round for some coop without making it such a struggle, If there’s one thing that puts off console players it’s EFFORT to play. Seeing me fiddle around in the Source Console jury rigging Portal 2 to split screen does not a potential PC player make.
My contribution; about 8 or so langorous hours in and i’m nearly done with the Wheatley levels. I am strolling and enjoying this and frankly, if you’re not taking in the sights what with the game not really pushing you to play at breakneck speed, then you’re really failing to appreciate the game properly. Don’t give me the ‘time poor’ excuse. If you’re bragging about a sub 4 hour completion, then you’re likely playing games enough of the time to get that good. SAVOUR a good game, don’t gulp it down.
Anyway, I see this as Valve’s love letter to Half-Life, they just couldn’t resist modelling another stunning decaying old science facility.

I beat Portal 2 in negative two hours.
When I decide to get the game (which is to say, when I have the money for it) I will have already finished it two hours ago. It creates an interesting paradox in which I will probably not want to buy the game since I already finished it, but if I don’t buy it I would never have finished it two hours earlier so the act of not buying it will invalidate my already existing experience with the game. I will probably have to be in a constant state of contemplation about purchasing it an hour from now in order to have played it already.

Can we please get a moratorium on using the word “entitled” on the Internet, please? For god’s sake, it’s so overused and *misused* that it makes my head hurt. Just. Stop. You aren’t being clever by repeating an empty talking point spawned from the depths of Fox News.

I can’t help but psychoanalyse when I see something like this. I mean, why would you be so mad at the word if you didn’t have some sort of investment there? Whenever I see people this angry over the misuse of a word, I tend to think it sounds like ‘stop calling me on what I’m doing’ rather than ‘stop misusing a word.’

Words get misused and misappropriated every day on the Internet, billions of them, it’s happening right now. You could get angry about any of these misused words, and yet you pick just one out to get really, really very angry about. (It wasn’t a complaint, after all, it was rage. And not of the Id sort. …there’s probably a really clever joke in there, somewhere.)

You seem to always see angry people when they get annoyed at something. In your opinion, people can’t get annoyed at anything?…

Curious coming from someone who gets frequently annoyed at what others have to say when it isn’t in line with your way of thinking, Wulf. How about exerting some consistency and either not get angry when people say things you don’t like, or stop being so condescending towards people that are expressing their annoyance at something?

After the last Portal release the RPS guys went into ‘fanboy’ mode for it, so no suprise to see the same thing this time around. For me the 1st game was easy and short without much replay value, an interesting concept sure, but not worth all the raving. Looks like this one is more of the same … it IS short wether you take 4 or 8 hours for the SP part. Thats little more than a demo IMO, but to each their own. Will pick this one up in some future sale Im sure, for now I’ll just have to deal with the rabid RPS staff and their Portal fetish :)

Given the first game was ‘short’, you’d be something of an idiot to complain the second game was also ‘short’. I mean why not complain about the fact it has very similar gameplay to the original Portal while we’re there, or that they were so lazy rather than come up with an innovative new title they simply added a number to the original one.

That’s true. Even if it is 8 hours, it *is* short. I remember a lot of people were angry about Metro 2033, Call of Duty, Homefront, whatever for only presenting them with a one-digit amount of singleplayer campaign playtime. And most of those had about or more than eight hours… at least I don’t recall anyone claiming playing them through in four hours, as is the case with Portal 2.
I believe this wouldn’t have been a problem if the game weren’t full-price, but alas, Valve seems to need money. Perhaps they are going to buy Greece with it. Or Portugal. Or the US, should those rating agencies decide to pawn them.

Obviously you are entitled to your opinion, and my comment was just that, you’re a tough critic :) Not meant to be disparaging in any way.

And I agree with you, everyone makes their own cost/benefit analysis; an 8-10 hour game is just about perfect for my lifestyle (DA felt like work after a certain point… though I did finish it), but even 8 hours might be not enough for a full-priced game for some… both of which is totally ok.

8 hours is longer than the single player content of the majority of FPS games over the past 10 years. In fact it’s longer than I remember Half Life 2 being, or for that matter the initial single player run through of both the L4D games.

To be honest the only one I can think of is the Op Flash / ARMA games, but I’m not sure about that as a) I’ve usually always bought them when they’ve had one or more expansions included and b) my helicopter piloting skills turn a deadly airborne gunship into a self guided brick for the most part, so it generally takes me about three hours to get to the helicopter mission and around three days to get past it.

Doom 3 is about 15-18 hours depending on player skill and difficulty level (and assuming you’re not trying to speedrun).

Since that I can’t recall an FPS single player game that took me more than about ten hours. I guess the FPS crowd would argue that it’s the multiplayer that provides value in a modern FPS, not the single player, whereas once you’ve played through Portal in SP and co-op, most gamers will be done.

Same applies to any linear non-sandboxy game though. Assuming the co-op is the same length as the single player you’re talking 16 hours, which would still come out favourably compared to say Deus Ex, Stalker et al.

Are there not challenge modes like in the first game that will extend it far past that 8 hours? And remember, it’s not an FPS, it’s a puzzle game. That’s 8 hours of original and different puzzles. If they treated it like an FPS there would be loads of repeated sections where you’re essentially doing the same thing. It isn’t like that.

Quote: ““Given the first game was ‘short’, you’d be something of an idiot to complain the second game was also ‘short’.”
Considering that he hasn’t PLAYED Portal 2 yet, I’d say yes, you are quite right there.”

Funny, I’d say if someone can’t tell the difference between commenting on an article or principle and complaining about a specific game … well, rather than be rude myself I’ll just quote the original:

When I was a lad a computer was called a console, you typed on your console and logged into your console…. so in Portal 2 set in the 1980’s style glados doesn’t don’t switch off your console still work

Whining about the potato sack stuff is just stupid. It’s a bunch of fun cheap games bundled together. At the very least it gave you a way to kill time while waiting for portal. If you only bought it to speed up the portal release and you’re unhappy with the result then you have no one to blame but yourself. Maybe next time you’ll recognize a marketing gimmick when you see one.

1) four hours, eight hours. Who cares? Wasn’t the lesson of Portal 1 that a game shouldn’t outstay its welcome? Give me a blast-through four hours, or eight with time to smell the flowers, and I’m happier than I’ll be if you mutliply the puzzles or introduce deathtraps and savepoints to make it 20-hours.
2) Zero-Day DLC (or skins, useless junk) makes some sense: If you’re going to make money selling something to gamers, make the most money but having it available from the start. DLC is kinda like the hotel minibar though: keep it out of the way and unessential. I’ll be annoyed if you charge me to use the fridge. I’ll be really pissed off if you put a water bottle on my bedside table with a note saying I can drink it for five quid. And if you make the toilet accessible only by a credit card swipe, I’m liable to leave housekeeping a gift in the bed.
3) Yeah, it’s released for console at the same time. Port?
4) ARG? Hell, they had that potato sack thing behind a lot of math and variables. I suppose someone could have calculated what impact playing would have. In fact, didn’t someone do just that? Come on, we all suspected they weren’t going to move the release date up that much: it was probably wired to their brick-and-mortar distribution contracts anyway. Brilliant marketing: their indie studio buddies made some money off of it, Portal 2 got a lot of buzz, and the players did move the release up. What more do you want?
5) Trolling? Hell, RPS, just by posting this, generates a lot of discussion and a lot of hits. I’m sure when they look at their page-impressions, they’ll find that Portal 2 made them a lot of cash. If they want to make more money, all they need is someone to write a nasty review. That will bring out the haters.
So, in other words, RPS makes money by furthering the discussion. That’s the troll effect. They do not make money by being a shrill defender of a hated game.

Mk, RPS, Is it worth $50? for purely SP?
I really want this game, but I don’t know if I want to be spending $50 plus the 2-3 hour dl time or whatever it will take. =/
And I will be very disappointed if this is the best game of the year.
I want Battlefield 3 to romp everything :> Duke not being shit, would also be a bonus, oh and Skryim!

It depends. Do you calculate the value of a game by time ingame/money spent or by fun ingame/money spent? If the first, I’d advise a walk to the park to watch the ducks. If the second, Portal 2 might be an option. :)

That’s my current dilemma with this game. I’ll only be able to play it SP, not multiplayer. I think $50 USD is a very fair price for a 6-8 hour SP game plus MP if you’re actually going to use the MP side of the game. But if I’m not playing MP, then the cost/value calculation changes. And this is also in the context of a bunch of other games out there right now, that are more long-term immersive and replayable (Shogun 2, various flight sims, the upcoming Witcher 2, etc.) So I’ll get it eventually, but not right now, and not at this price.

Sorry but I really hate valve selling hats etc. it’s just making people buy overpriced items that could have been included in the actual game. In tf2 it was justified with the hundreds of free updates before and how the game was included in the orange box but a new fully priced game it is not. I’ll wait for a steam sale on this one :/

Making? I don’t recall anyone being forced to spend money on purely aesthetic items that have no impact on gameplay. It’s likely no different from TF2; profits from it will go toward free content updates for everyone.

Art assets cost time for someone to make. Some people like having different art assets in their game. DLC lets that happen for those people, Valve make more profit on the DLC, it’s how things work.

It is interesting how worked up people get over trivial things. Imagine that all the DLC that has been released for Portal 2 didn’t exist. Then play Portal 2. You’ve missed out on nothing, and enjoyed one of the best games ever made.

I went to see a new film at the cinema last week, on the day it was released. The ticket cost £10. But in the lobby of the cinema it was possible to buy popcorn for £3! This day 0 extra content is complete BS. I’ll never go to the cinema again. For entertainment I’ll clench my eyelids shut and watch the patterns appera on my retina.

1) For a game without replayable MP content the game should be longer to justify a $45 price tag.

2) If they have finished content on day 0 it should be in the game. Not putting these things in the game, no matter how little they effect game play, is terrible for consumers. Justifying this practice makes you part of the problem.

3) Regardless of whether it’s a console port, the two offending text strings (the other one is at some point the game tells you to “Press Start”) are sloppy and the game should be criticized for them. They also definitely should have been caught during QA.

4) Yeah, the number I’ve heard is that it came out 7 hours early. If people are really upset for buying other games JUST to unlock Portal 2 early then that’s their own fault.

I’m actively trying to think of it as anything other than a slimy business practice, and I just can’t. It benefits consumers 0% and benefits the companies 100%. It is worse for consumers in every way than including the content as part of the game. If you can explain how it is anything other than a negative for consumers then I’d be happy to listen.

That’s because you base your argument on the incorrect assumption that the content is created and then deliberately removed, rather than it being produced in the three months after the game was completed and handed to Sony/Microsoft to certify for release on their toy boxes.

…because they’re completely optional and have no effect on gameplay, yet they raise money for REAL, free content for everyone, thereby benefiting the consumer and causing no loss for anyone who didn’t buy them?

That only took me like 1 second to think up, you should really try harder! :)

“@Archonsod, IF that’s true then it’s still not a POSITIVE for them to not release that content for free to the consumers through a patch. You know, some companies used to do that..”

Well yes, but by the same argument it’s not a positive that they charge for games in the first place. Clearly in an ideal world developers would work on every game for as long as we want them to and provide it all for free. Unfortunately we live in the real world where people like to earn a wage.

Prior to DLC if you had a three month wait between finishing a product and it being released you started on your next release. Companies can’t afford to pay developers to sit around idle, at least not while keeping game prices below a hundred dollars.

Or is it that you feel that you’re missing out on the full Portal 2 Experience by not having some cosmetic boondoggles in the coop mode, and you resent Valve for making you pay for said meaningless cosmetic boondoggles even when you know they’re meaningless?

Do you resent the Volkswagen group for selling cheap(ish) Volkswagens and prestigious Audis at the same time? Surely everyone should get an Audi at VW prices?